Fool4Thought

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Count On Me Singapore....

Da jia hao, jing tian wo hen gao xing neng gou he da jia fen xiang wo de gan xiang. In case u didnt get that, i was saying i am happy to share my thoughts today...
Some pple have been commenting on the way i start of my blog entries, so this time i had a different introduction. Hope u all like the change...

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Anyway, im posting this entry from my room in hall2. The room is quite new because they recently renovated the room. The location of hall2 is also excellent, it is very near the north spine of ntu. Just 3 min walk from northspine and maybe 7 min from south spine. Good for pple who like to wake up 15min before their classes start. However, because my room is on the second floor, it can be very warm at night. The toilets are also shared, 4 persons to one toilet instead of having a common toilet for every floor like other halls. Not too good if the 4 pple get diarrohoea after supper or u have pple sharing the toilet with u who dun flush after.... wat are the chances... Ok, so much for the accomodation part. btw my neighbours are good civic minded pple...

National day just passed 2 days ago, i cant help but want to discuss abt the large number of foreigners in my school. Ok, some of my thoughts may be slightly biased but just bear with it cos its my opinion...
I've been a tad depressed lately when i look ard in my lecture grp and even more so when in my tutorial grp. The number of foreign sudents in my course is astounding. One eg would be my econs tutorial grp with 6 pple in the grp and yours truly being the only Sporean, the rest are from motherland China. Somehow, i am in the same grp with them because i was sitting ard them. I have nothing against them, in fact if u look at my previous previous blog entry, i actually think that pple should not discriminate against China students. Those who study in NTU are mostly scholars from their schs back in China.
So naturally, they are very good in their studies. So imagine u put abt 200 hundred of these scholars in engineering, these are the pple i will be competing with to get my honours. I am no scholar, i am just a normal A level student with mediocre A level grades and i've been on holiday for nearly 3 yrs with the SAF... Damn, looks like there's alot of catching up to do. Its depressing to see the china student beside you being able to answer all the questions in the tutorial and i look at my tutorial answers on my fullscap and see some blanks.... esp during physics and maths.
An interesting observation, during physics lecture i tried to sit infront to be able to pay attention better. The first 6 rows are filled with China students, no joke... left, right, back, front. They are everywhere... The Sporeans all sit at the back... One of them sitting on the 2nd row was actually playing NBA on his laptop during the physics lecture while i was trying to figure out what the lecturer was saying. I bet they studied all that b4 in China.
U know i am not trying to find an excuse not to study hard, however i am quite disturbed by the fact that the government actually allow so many foreigners into our local Uni. Maybe they want to attract talent because many Sporeans go overseas to study also. But by opening more spaces to foreigners in Spore they are actually sacrificing opportunities for locals to study in Spore. Sure there are other places to study like SMU, SIM and other private unis, but they dun offer engineering. Don't they know how many Sporeans have to go overseas and spend a bomb to study the same course when they can actually take it in Spore. I guess in Spore we have no choice but to improve ourselves by competing with foreign talent. Guess i will be seeing the same situation next time when i look for a job.

My course friend Zhen Zong whom i met in orientation, he's from Perak. He's a great guy, willing to teach me maths and physics. I dun wanna be an under achiever cos i'm not a scholar from China... Ok gtg now, i want to study to be on par with the China students.
National day just passed, but i like the words of this song, 'Count on me Singapore... Count on me Singapore...'

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Some observations

Hello guys.... I've read all your lamentations and the hardship u all are gg thru... Let me assure u that my engineering course is just as taxing. But its not that bad, still manageble for now. Prob those who never take econs at A levels will suffer la, cos they cover costs of production in one lecture(that was only the second lecture) and also elasticity of demand... So those who never take econs b4 have to work double double hard la... But because i didnt take chemistry last time, i am also disadvantaged cause life sciences and material science module also need organic chemistry and some good chemistry backgrd.

A look at my modules this semester:
FE1006 mathematics 1
FE1004 Life Sciences
FE1001 Physics 1
FE1005 Material Science
HE191 Principle of Economics
FE1072 Lab 1b


Ok, studies aside. The gers in NTU are not bad, they dress quite well. its especially so as i have observed when sitting at the canteen B to have lunch. the bloody queues are damn long during peak hrs... But then again, wat course am i doing? ENGINEERING!!! where maybe only10% of the gers from the cohort wear skirts. The rest are probably not local or just wear t-shirt and pants. Ok, i sound superficial here, but thats just my observation. The business girls tend to dress better and put on some make up... An interesting observation that Eugene made, the aura of engine students and business students. While walking down the aisles of Ntu, students who are chatty and happy while walking seem to be from ??? while those carrying their big bags or files with their notes and looking tired and gloomy are from??? I leave it up to u to decide which students from which course will fit the above descriptions.... Here's a clue, the latter type of students are doing a 4yr course. One yr longer than their fellow students from other faculties. And eventually, will their salaries be higher??? That has yet to be seen...

Anyway, to ZC:If u cant come back, then maybe we go over to visit u??? but maybe it will be nice if u could sponsor us? i dun ask for much, maybe airfare will do la... hahaha. anyway, remember to study hard!!!